America's Pioneer Aces: A Historic Perspective on the First Pursuit Group's Remarkable Anomalies: Frank Luke, Jr. and Eddie Rickenbacker and Their Times

Flight Journal, Feb 2004 by DeGroat, Robert S

America's Pioneer Aces: A Historic Perspective on the First Pursuit Group's Remarkable Anomalies: Frank Luke, Jr. and Eddie Bickenbacker and Their Times by fames H. Fanner; BAC Publishers Inc., 1749 W. 13th St., Upland, CA 91786; 284 pages; illustrated; $29.95,

Contrary to our romantic notions of "knights of the sky," WW I aviators probably felt anything but glamorous. Before cockpit heating and oxygen masks, pilots of the Great War coped with cold, thin air while they tried to survive combat.

A new book by James H. Farmer called "America's Pioneer Aces" traces the early lives and combat experiences of several top-scoring aces. While it's principally the story of Frank Luke and Eddie Rickenbacker, it takes a remarkably comprehensive look at these pilots and examines what made them superior fliers within a much larger context.

According to the thinking of the day, college-educated students would have made the best pilots, but the reality was something quite different. As Farmer relates, although Frank Luke finished high school, Eddie Rickenbacker had to leave school in the seventh grade, and another ace, Raoul Lufbery, dropped out of high school.

In addition, the planes they flew were extraordinary only in the public's imagination. They were flimsy, unreliable and aerodynamically inefficient. A number of causes could result in a raging inferno in the cockpit-hardly a quality that would instill confidence during those early days before parachutes were routinely used.

Farmer is also the first historian to travel to Murvaux, France, to examine the actual site where the controversy about the final moments of Luke's life played out. This book should be required reading for those with an interest in WWI flying and the early American aces it produced. It is a fascinating story.